Sunday, 22 June 2014

The Husband to Be has joked about a money saving strategy
he has come up with for the wedding. It’s like a wedding ‘swear box’, if you will. His suggested
banned words are: DIY, blank canvas and put your own stamp on it. You see, I've recently been heard to say these word quite regularly because when it comes to planning this wedding I’m thinking like a pro –
Kirstie Allsopp.

Kirstie

‘Kirstie Allsopp’s Whimsical Handmade Wedding’. I can see it
now. A patchwork of carefully crafted rustic loveliness all so fondly collected
from car boots, grown, arranged, upcycled, glued, painted, appliqued, shabby
chiced, sewn, baked and presented on the big day in a fairy light filled tipi
for the lucky bride and groom – me and The Husband To Be.

It has crossed my mind to post her a letter outlining this
idea in the hope that she’s looking for inspiration for her next hit TV series.
She would love it and more importantly so would her producers. Her people would
call my people and we’d be filming in the chintzy craft studio of her country
cottage the next week. With Kirstie onside, this wedding planning business
would be a breeze. There’s just one hitch – I don’t want to be on telly. (As a teenager
at Twickenham, I was made to sing ‘Oh When The Saints’ on TV next to my overzealous
parents and am still mentally scarred.) So, I don’t think we’ve got much of a
chance enlisting Kirstie to magic up our perfect DIY wedding with her own fair
hands.

But that’s ok, because as it happens, the wedding industry
is tuned in. You can buy whatever wedding paraphernalia you fancy in this homemade
style. If you’re prepared to pay over the odds, it’s a cinch to create that
dream DIY look without lifting a finger. But that defeats the object doesn’t
it? Surely you couldn’t spend the day pretending you’d spent hours labouring
over the sewing machine fashioning the bunting from floral vintage tea dresses
and knickers, when actually you re-mortgaged your house so you could buy it
from notonthehighstreet.com.Surely for
it to be authentic it should all be borne out of your love, and creativity should
pour out of your loved up hearts to create a day that is truly ‘you’.

And herein lies the problem. Every now and again, Kirstie’s
handcrafted world of sugar and spice and all things nice becomes a little bit
too much to bear. We’re still over a year away from saying “I do” and on one occasion I've already found myself with my knickers in a twist over a planning predicament. Another time, my brain was in wedding overdrive so much that it took me over an
hour to get to sleep. I hasten to add that this wasn't stress induced insomnia but rather as a result of revelling in my first (champagne fuelled) foray into the wonderful world of wedding dress shopping and unexpectedly finding The Dream Dress within five minutes of being in there. Result! (Apart from the fact that for an equivalent price I could buy something with four doors and a roof.) I very much dislike it if it takes me longer than five
minutes to drop off so I decided I needed a cure for my wedding fever. Who
would help me see perspective? I decided to turn to my favourite book – How to
be a Woman – written by my second favourite famous woman: Caitlin Moran. She’d have
some wise words on the matter, I thought.

Caitlin

“Of course, people discovering true love works out badly for
everyone, really.”

Ah.

“I mean, it’s OK in the end – once everyone settles down,
and stops making a big fuss about it.”

Fine.

“But fairly near the beginning, there is a massive test of
everyone’s patience and love – a wedding.”

Okaaay, I guess I did say I wanted a wedding antidote...

“Weddings are our fault, ladies. Every aspect of their
pantechnicon of awfulness happened on our watch.”

Well, that’s a bit extreme.

“Weddings do women no good at all. They’re a viper’s pit of
waste and despair.”

No, hang on - I needed some perspective, not to be put right off.

“IT’S THE BEST DAY OF
YOUR LIFE!”

I’m lost. I got the impression you weren’t a fan.

“There are two hitches with this.”

Got it. Actually, I agree with this. Go on...

“The first is that you should always be distrustful of days
that are preordained to be legendary.”

This is it! I KNEW she’d make a good point. She’s got it spot on - this is what is at the crux of my
problem with Kirstie. If you’re not careful, all these wedding magazines and
wedding blogs and wedding TV shows suck you in. They suck you in! They suck you in and leave you feeling pressure
to make The Big Day into The Best Day Of Your Whole Entire Life EVER. But this
is a problem! If you put too much emotional investment and
too much time and too much money into trying to make this ONE day (actually, more
like ten hours) perfect, there is a hell of a lot of factors which could leave
you disappointed.

What if you wake up with a streaming cold or an unsightly blemish in
the middle of your forehead? What if you find that the cat’s vommed in your
shoes? What if the wedding car breaks down and you end up in your dad’s Honda? What
if the photographer gets stuck in a traffic jam and arrives after the ceremony
has finished? What if it’s pouring with rain and blowing a gale-force? What if
there’s a crisis and someone who you really want to be there can’t make it? What
if you sleep so badly the night before that you wake up with a raging headache?
(I couldn’t sleep the night before Kate and Wills got hitched so who knows what
state I’ll be in on the eve of our wedding! I’m doomed to be baggy eyed!)

Caitlin makes a very good point. I got a dose of perspective
and this was what I needed. But then she spoils it. Her sermon about “demented
wedding lust” goes on. And on. And on. This was perhaps a little too far down
the other end of the spectrum to feel comfortable – I felt myself defending Kirstie
and the blogs and the desire to spend money on it all. Caitlin gave me a much
appreciated smack of reality but if Caitlin and Kirstie got in a fight, I’d
side with Kirstie. Bring on the bunting!